


a teacup fit for a king

by wordsmithraven



Series: A Drink from the Mnemosyne [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Ficlet, Historical, Historical Inaccuracy, Non-Canon Relationship, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Canon, Warlock Magnus Bane, Young Magnus Bane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-10
Updated: 2017-07-10
Packaged: 2018-11-30 05:43:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11457189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsmithraven/pseuds/wordsmithraven
Summary: Magnus remembers one of his earlier lovers, a fae woman who was definitely up to no good.





	a teacup fit for a king

**Author's Note:**

> A while ago I started a 2.07 continuation/alteration story that was going to be Magnus remembering times different romantic and platonic relationships went to shit because he didn't say what he should have said. I had an idea that he would remember three memories while he was with Alec that would make him slow down their first time so they could through things more deeply. The story never quite came together the way I wanted it to, however, and I've since abandoned it.
> 
> BUT I did finish three parts that I've turned into little vignettes of stories (both original and using book canon) from Magnus' past. I've decided to post them on the eve of Magnus' big memory episode. Why not, eh? They are all going to be massively non-tv canon and non-book canon. *shrug*
> 
> Also, prepare yourself for some wild bending of RL historical events. lmao I dun kurr. This is criminally un-beta'd.
> 
> Here is the first one. I'll put the others in a series tag on here that I'll probably add to as time goes on.
> 
> Leave me some comments, as always.

He had been involved with Raquel Ferriera for something like 4 months at the time. She had been his first _something_.

Not his first love; that had been Melati from his home town in Indonesia. Melati who at 10 was already one of their village’s most promising basket weavers. Melati with her sweet smile and shining eyes and fingers covered in tiny cuts that would eventually toughen out into callouses as her weaving prowess grew. He had only worked up to holding her hand when he walked her home one time after a festival. He didn’t really know what he was supposed to do when you liked a girl so he had just done what he thought he would like someone to do for him. He had held her hand and walked her home and gave her a sprig of jasmine that looked nice in her hair. Then everything with his mother had happened and he never saw Melati again.

Not his first time, either; that had been Pietro Monteverde from when he was 16 and living in Madrid with the Silent Brothers. The mundane boy had been exactly his age and so much trouble. He’d had blond hair and gray eyes and lips drawn in a curving bow. He had been a thief who had stolen Magnus’ money satchel, his virginity, and his heart…not necessarily in that order. Magnus forgets, really. Still, despite what it may have seemed, there had been no regrets. Pietro had given him one of the most joyous three weeks of his entire life. He had made off with Magnus’ pouch but left in its place an ivory brooch stolen from the pocket of some rich shipping merchant. It would have been worth three times the pouch’s contents if Magnus had sold it. He still had the brooch squirreled away in his loft.

No, Raquel had been something else. She was two years older and she’d had dark hair, dark eyes, and a rakish tongue. A wild child who longed to escape the strict control of her parents’ protection and the society she’d grown up in…or so she’d said. She had dotted her lips red and said his name like it was spelled “Magnous” instead of “Magnus.” She was exactly the kind of woman he always fell for. Lively, naughty, and a bundle of laughs.

Raquel had been his first Downworlder, definitely. She had been an Anjana fairy of the Seelie Court. A diminutive fae barely standing as tall as his knees when next to her. He had already started selling his spells for money by that point and he'd sold her an amulet that let her change her size to human height and proportion. Not just a glamor either, a full body transformation. Once she could go out in the mundane world, she had torn through Madrid’s high society. Magnus had been helpless in her wake.

He had been so young. Seventeen was old in those days for mundanes, old enough even for marriage in some places, but with his particular childhood and the way the Silent Brothers took charge of him, some days he had felt like he was being treated like he was barely out of his adolescence. It was worse when he had been around other warlocks as every single one never failed to remind him that they had already lived for centuries and he was “barely more than a mortal.” How tiring they had been. So Magnus had deliberately done things to defy them all. He had rented a flat in the city, taken on clients, grown out his facial hair to look more mature, and had lied outrageously to everyone about his age.

He’d lied about his age to Raquel too but she had seen right through it. Either he was a terrible liar or she had an otherworldly perception of others. Perhaps both, if Magnus was honest with himself. Either way she had not minded that he was young once she saw the strength of his spellcasting. She had been his first betrayal, perhaps. His first heartbreak.

They’d had a little game between them. They would sneak into fancy balls and see who could scandalize the nobility more. Magnus remembered twinkling chandeliers, boisterous laughter from red rouged lips, and the screams of noble fops who suddenly found themselves magically swapped into the clothes of their companions. Magnus must have broken a thousand laws back then, mundane and Downworld alike. Raquel had broken even more.

He had wanted so much to impress her. He had learned, perfected, and even invented dozens of new spells for their adventures. Sound spells, sleep spells, ward spells, stealth spells, sense enhancement spells, elaborate glamors, translation spells, locking spells, trap spells…anything and everything. Many of them he had locked into a belt of jewels ensorcelled for her to activate each one at her will.

He remembers one particular spell for weight augmentation. She had not just asked to become lighter. She had said she wanted to be so light that she could float away on the wind like a dandelion seed. The research alone had him up late into the night for nearly two weeks straight. His work bench had been covered in parchment scribbled with calculation notes and diagrams and potion ingredients. Several highly unfortunate rodents had sat in cages to his left. Some were still alive…most were not. To ease his conscience, he had always picked rodents that were already sick or dying. Most mundane diseases they carried he was immune to as a warlock, everything else he could cure. He had hoped, at least.

He had turned to one such animal on a particular evening and picked its cage up to move it closer. The rat had squealed in fear, somehow sensing its own doom. He’d wiggled his fingers, given a snap to call his magic, and swirled them in the sigil he had modified for this spell.

The rat had frozen and shivered, floating in the air. Suddenly it had convulsed and snapped into ball of itty-bitty rat gore. Blood and viscera had splattered all over his work desk and his front from his waist up to his face. His entire body had shuddered like he was going to vomit right there. Then Magnus had let out one of the most frustrated growls of his entire 18 years of life.

“I would much prefer that did not happen to me, if you please.”

He had whirled around on her at that. She had smiled saucily at his wild eyes and gesticulating hands.

“Honestly, Raquel, what do you even need with a weight lightening spell that extensive? You are as slim and delicate as a feather and if you need to be lighter, just changing back into your diminutive form should do the trick, my flower.”

Raquel had sucked her teeth from where she lounged across a settee in his tiny Madrid work room. Her dark brown locks had been fashioned into ringlets that framed her face and yet perfectly showed off her pointed elfin ears. It had been a new lark of hers to show off her ears to mundanes and watch them struggle with how to explain them.

He had spelled away the gore on his clothes and his work bench. With a sigh, he had thrown himself onto the ground next to the settee and rolled his head back onto her stomach. The rigid bones of her corset had been an interesting contrast to the silk of her emerald dress when he pressed his cheek deeper into the feel of it.

Her lips had pursed as a Cheshire cat grin spread across them. She had practically purred at him, “You never know when you might have needs to be even lighter than a fairy, Magnous. It could save your life one day.”

A part of him had thought to question that statement and another part had wondered if that was some type of innuendo to which he should reply. The winning part was the one that was so frustrated with his failed spell that he had jumped up to get back to work. In the end he had chosen to not engage with the comment at all.

Raquel had always been very careful to never try lying to him. She had simply hidden everything behind a sly smile. It had made it much easier for Magnus to lie to himself.

 _In hindsight,_ Magnus thought _, it is **fairly** obvious what Raquel was doing._ But he was foolish then and a little in love and whenever his doubts had crept up on him, his tongue would stick in his mouth and his fears would go unvoiced. Never spoken, never confirmed.

When he was just turning eighteen, everything changed. It was 1611 and they’d had a fight over something he couldn’t really remember but the argument had blown up into a knockdown, drag out and they hadn’t spoken for over two weeks.

But he had missed her and he had thought he might be in love, so he went to see her. In the course of their reconciliation—inevitably they wound up naked—she had somehow gotten him to agree to help her sneak into King Philip III’s palace.

He should have said “no” to her. He’d known the whole thing was a bad idea. It had felt wrong and different from those times they had snuck into noble ladies’ soirees.

“Magnous, you are the most serious, dare I say, _pious_ young self-proclaimed sybarite I have ever met. It is just another lark with me. We shall move around the paintings, swap their good wine for the lowest quality, and perhaps steal a porcelain tea set. Imagine having tea drunk from the cup of the king!”

She had been lying. Or something like it. A different objective had been hidden in there but he couldn’t quite find out what. She’d known it, he’d known it, and she’d known that he had known it. Whenever she obfuscated the truth, she would try to distract from her face so you wouldn’t notice her eyes shift. In that moment, she had flicked open her fan to flutter it around her mouth but Magnus had been seeing her for eight months by then and he had known.

“What could I say to make you stop, Raquel? You could die or be captured or be arrested by shadowhunters for exposing our world. What can I say to make you give this up?”

Her eyes had lanced him through. A look to root him in his place. “Executed? Perhaps.” A gleam had shown in her eyes then and she’d said, “Shall we call it that? I shall play the condemned man and ask for that which all condemned men seek. Speak one word to me that moves me as it would a man about to die. A word of power that has naught of your particular power in it yet it diverts me from my course. If it is the correct word, mayhap I will stay for you, Magnous.”

He’d had the strength to refuse to go with her but not the strength to deny her the finished gemstone belt.

He had lain supine and nude beneath his sheets the night she had marked down for her caper. The cloying dark had been wet and heavy with more than just the summer’s humidity. He’d felt her shift next to him and lean over his face. A light press of her lips had touch his own and he struggled to stay still as if he was yet asleep.

He’d heard her moving in the dark, getting dressed. The riddle she had given him had turned in his mind for days but he’d had no answer for her. A moment to speak had risen then. A split second to say something, anything…everything to make her stay.

“Please.”

He had sat up in the bed then. His cat eyes had shown bright in the darkness and he could see her perfectly. She had worn men’s clothes colored a dark gray and her hair had been coiled tight to the back of her neck. A length of cloth had been wrapped loosely about her neck, ready to be pulled up into a mask. The gemstone belt had glowed at her waist before she had pulled her tunic down to cover it.

“Please.”

She had paused at the second utterance of his word. She’d made her way to him in the dark and ran her hand through his long hair. A light kiss had fallen on his forehead, pressed there for such an extended moment that he had closed his eyes.

“Almost, my sweet. Almost.”

Then she was gone.

He had wept alone a long time for her but after some weeks of such, his heart had calmed and the running stream from his eyes had slowed to a trickle and then to nothing at all. She had contacted him exactly twice more after that but he’d never seen Raquel again.

In the days after her caper, he had heard tales sweeping the city of the burglar who had bested the king’s guards. Every tavern worth his patronage had been buzzing with gossip. This fleet footed foe had japed with the king’s portraiture, turned wine into vinegar, and made off with his finest plate!

“Nay, his best waistcoat, I heard!”

“His kerchief!”

“No, you fool, that was Her Majesty’s kerchief.”

“I heard he made off with Her Majesty’s maid!”

Tales of a cloaked figure flying away from a window of the queen’s wing were attached to some of the rumors. Magnus had smiled into a tankard of ale at that. Raquel had always been so careful never to outright lie to him.

Three months later Her Majesty, Queen Margaret of Spain, had died suddenly in childbirth. Rumors had raced through the city again, this time that she had been cursed by an evil witch. The chief suspect had been the Duke of Lerma, of course. Their feud over having the king’s ear had been long and storied in Spain. Raquel and Magnus had crashed one of the Duke’s parties once. She had left him alone at one point too, come to think of it.

A vise grip had taken hold of his lungs at that. A frisson of fear that he possibly could’ve been part of such an event had swept through his entire body.

Some days after, Raquel had sent him a package filled with a single cup and saucer of the finest porcelain he had ever touched, a pouch of expensive tea worth more than the rent of his entire work room, and a slip of paper imprinted with a press of red lips.

> _"Tea fit for a king in a cup only we three shall share. Keep it for all eternity.” –Raquel_

He had brewed the tea and drank from the cup, understanding in more than just his unspoken heart that Raquel was no mere Anjana fae out for a lark. The brew was bitter on his tongue.

Some years later he’d heard the chief suspect of casting a spell on Queen Margaret had been switched to the Duke of Lerma’s secretary, Don Rodrigo Calderón, Marqués de Siete Iglesias. Then the man had been executed for an altogether different crime as the only evidence of sorcery against the queen had been a single handkerchief found in his room that was monogrammed with the letter “M.”

Magnus had remembered suddenly that it had been Don Rodrigo’s niece’s birthday ball, hosted at his summer home, that Raquel and he had upended with the swapped clothing routine. Raquel had been casing the homes of every party they snuck in to.

Raquel had contacted him once more, for the last time, after the news of Don Rodrigo’s execution had spread far and wide. She had sent him another package and inside had been coiled his gemstone belt. The spell stones had all been de-charged and the previous shine had been dulled to darkness. Another slip of paper.

> _“I would keep the belt but I fear it would remind me of you. The word I was look for was ‘stay,’ my Magnous._
> 
> _I am almost tired of being alone. Perhaps if we had met a few years from now, I would have been ready. But timing remains paramount in my business and our timing was never what it needed to be._
> 
> _A part of me wishes you had said what needed to be said and yet another is happy you did not.” –Raquel_

Magnus had not known if he really believed that she would have stopped her wet work had he uttered the right word. He had often told himself nothing would have turned her aside. Yet, there was a kernel of insecurity that had remained throughout the centuries. Could he have said more, _been_ more? Magnus knew it was foolish to think that way, but it was the way it was and he was only recently setting such feelings aside even if he could not set aside the memories.

He still had the gemstone belt and the king’s teacup locked in his loft safe.


End file.
